Rusty, the super “smart” Australian Shepherd who once saved his owner’s life, has returned to a safe and loving home after becoming separated from his owner on a highway in central Wyoming.
However, the journey home was far from short.
Lander Pet Connection Director Hannah MacGregor said Rusty came across her radar in May after a friend drove through the Shoshoni area on vacation and spotted the dog on the side of the road looking “really scared.”
“He was like out in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of people had left bowls of food and water,” she told me. “When they first contacted me about the dog being out there, I had already seen it on Facebook.
“Someone had posted, but they couldn’t get close to him, and they were just trying to find out where he belonged.”
MacGregor stated that her friend spent more than an hour talking and working with the dog before finally getting it into her car. She was finally able to do so after another family offered to help. Rusty was kept overnight by a friend before being transported to the shelter.
MacGregor stated that they always check for a microchip when they take in a dog at the shelter. They discovered one on Rusty. Two phone numbers and an emergency number were listed on the chip.
After trying the first two numbers and discovering that they had been disconnected, they dialed the emergency number and found Rusty’s owner’s mother in Oklahoma.
It turned out that Rusty’s owner, a woman, had been imprisoned in Colorado after living in Cheyenne. One of the woman’s friends was supposed to be responsible for the dog.
The friend vanished. It’s unclear how Rusty ended up outside Shoshone. However, MacGregor stated that, despite being covered in ticks, the dog did not appear to have walked the 270 miles from Cheyenne.
Finding a plan for Rusty’s care required waiting for his owner to be able to call. During the wait, the staff neutered him at the request of his owner’s mother.
During conversations with the dog owner’s mother and son, they realized they wouldn’t be able to drive up and get the dog.
Foster Care
Meanwhile, a family in Afton, Wyoming, volunteered to keep the dog short-term while a solution was worked out for a more permanent home.
“At that time, it sounded like the owner was going to get out of jail soon,” MacGregor recalls. However, that did not work out, and the owner’s incarceration was expected to last until at least January.
Rusty was bonding with the family, and the Aftons and MacGregor wanted to reduce stress on the dog by not passing him on to another home only to be passed on again.
“That’s when we got in contact with the owner’s other son,” MacGregor said. She stated that he lives near his grandmother and informed the shelter that his family would accept the dog.
Addison Miller stated that her husband, Allen, and their son, Aiden, will be hosting Allen’s mother once she completes her treatment for the addiction issues that led to her imprisonment.
So they were delighted to welcome Rusty into their family, which already includes two older dogs and a puppy. Rusty and the puppy quickly became friends, she explained.
Miller stated that she has experience with dog training, boarding, and rescue. To get Rusty, the family drove from Sapulpa, Oklahoma, to Rock Springs.
“He’s a purebred Australian Shepherd. “Both his parents are papered,” she explained. “He is the most beautiful brown boy ever and he is so sweet and so smart.”
Rusty made the 1,021-mile trip to his new home without incident.
Life Saver
Miller stated that her husband wanted it known that Rusty saved his owner’s life a little over a year ago. His mother had passed out on a bed from an overdose in a room with a locked door, and Rusty “somehow knew, ‘Hey, I need to go check on my mom,” she said.
The 2-year-old tried to chew through the door, but when he couldn’t, he went to her roommate’s door and jumped on it until it opened. Miller said his roommate asked the dog what was wrong.
“And Rusty pulls her roommate down to her room and is barking and scratching at the door and the roommate is mad because my door is all messed up now,” she told me. “But (the woman) is not answering so he busts through the door and there she is blue on the bed, and the roommate saved her.”
Miller stated that her husband’s mother is recovering from addiction and that once she is released, she will stay with them to continue her sobriety journey and be reunited with her “baby.” Miller claims her husband’s mother calls every day, and when Rusty hears her voice, he gets “all excited wagging his little nub tail.”
MacGregor stated that Rusty’s owner’s decision to have him microchipped contributed significantly to the story’s positive ending. Those good-news stories happen to them a few times a year.
“Microchips are such as amazing tool for animals that go missing,” according to her. “We’ll scan them, and lo and behold, the dog fell out of the truck and they didn’t notice.
“We will have situations where a cat arrives at the shelter as a’surrender’ and the (original) owner has been looking for it for the past two years, and (the cat) has been living with a Riverton family.” We were able to reunite them thanks to that microchip.
